It’s the interview that has been teased all week. And we were up and at ’em to listen to it as soon as it dropped.
Of course, it’s Nicky Byrne’s first podcast episode where he sat down with his former bandmate, Brian McFadden.
The pair had teased that they would discuss the real reason why Brian left the band 20 years ago.
In teasers, it appeared as though the pair got heated during their conversation. But worry not as there’s certainly no bad blood between the two men.
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Speaking about his decision to step away from the band, Brian admitted it was probably premature.
He confessed: “The idea of why I left has changed. The more I think back on it and the more I put myself back in that headspace different things come into my head as why I wanted to leave.”
He confessed that one of the reasons was that he wanted to spend time with his daughters, Molly and Lily. But he knows now it was an “impulsive” decision.
“It was probably way too early to leave. But the same time, my headspace, whatever was going on at home and having two kids and being away all the time, I was like ‘No, I need to step away from this’,” he told Nicky.
“Years later, I look back and go, ‘I probably could have done another tour’. Maybe if I had some time off I might have felt a bit different and my mind would have changed.
“I can be very selfish, I don’t think of other people when I make those decisions. I’m very impulsive and at the time my head felt swamped. I felt like the only way that I could get that swamped feeling away was by stepping back and taking a look at my life and starting again, basically.”
He went on to clarify: “You saw what happened then when I did go home, I ended up breaking up with Kerry [Katona]. So there was a lot more going on behind the scenes than just Westlife.”
Nicky confessed that he had no idea why Brian left the band, telling the man: “You never told us that. We were in a bubble, the best friends we became, we hated the sight of each other every other day, that happens. But nobody knew [about that]. You and Kerry were madly in love as far as we were concerned, with two beautiful daughters and so on and so forth.”
Despite confessing that the choice was “impulsive” and “selfish”, Brian said that it was the right decision for everyone.
“It worked out for everybody. I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my life, I’ve got a beautiful family, I’m still working, still doing gigs but I’m doing it on my own steam. My number one priority is home and family life, and then I go and do the gigs to pay the bills,” he told Nicky.
“You boys went on to be bigger than we ever even were for those six years, so it worked out for everybody in the end and I’d love if we could leave it like that.”
